New claims challenge the disappearance of lost flight MH370 ten years on
On 8 March, 10 whole years will have passed since the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 seemingly disappeared into thin air after departing from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Mystery still surrounds the flight, carrying 239 passengers, which is said to have lost contact with air traffic controllers above the South China Sea just 38 minutes into its journey.
While little evidence of what really happened has ever been uncovered, officials claim the plane was tracked crossing Malaysia before disappearing over the Andaman Sea, with satellite analysis revealing the aircraft had U-turned, leading to the presumption it landed in the South Indian Ocean.
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However, despite a huge international search, which quickly became the most expensive in aviation history, no trace of the plane was ever found at the potential crash site, located around 1,500 miles from Australia, despite some pieces of debris which have been widely disputed.
French journalist Florence de Changy has been investigating the mystery for her new book The Disappearing Act: The Impossible Case of MH370, which challenges much of the investigation's findings.
She told The Sun: "It is shocking for the families. The official narrative has been so strongly imposed on them that they have no choice but to stick to that and the only thing they can ask for is to keep searching.
"They worry if they start to doubt the authorities, they will start to break talks with them."
As part of her research, de Changy found evidence from Vietnamese air traffic control which suggests the plane continued to fly for more than an hour after officials claim it plummeted from the sky, eventually falling north of Vietnam at around 2.40am, minutes after a mayday call said the cabin was disintegrating.
The journalist is now absolutely convinced that the plane did not crash into the Southern Indian Ocean.
In fact, the only circumstantial evidence of a crash in this location is a piece of debris from the right wing of a plane, called a flaperon, which was found on a beach on Reunion Island, near Mauritius, over a year later in July 2015. However, de Changy says there are "good reasons not to believe it is from MH370."
"First, they never even established the provenance of the flaperon. This is shocking," she explained.
“Secondly, they said the flaperon suffered two consecutive shocks, which does not fit a crash in the ocean."
She went on to explain that a piece of broken composite material is not designed to float, yet this particular piece must've travelled 10 miles a day in the fiercest ocean on the planet to reach the location it was discovered in.
The writer is one of many people who believe the evidence could possibly have been planted.
Other conspiracies include the belief that the captain of the flight, Zaharie Ahmad Shar, could be to blame for the plane's downfall, but de Changy believes this is simply a smear campaign to cover up the truth.
The Disappearing Act: The Impossible Case of MH370, by Florence de Changy, is out now.
Topics: World News
Emma Rosemurgey